would have been they would have had nothing to do with the great purpose of the Christian revelation-the giving men life through His name. This we are taught; and are we not taught also that every true life must have its time of seclusion and growth? that a youth forced into prominence and publicity before its time is an unfortunate youth? We suffer from perpetual glare-strong natures need shade and quiet, and time to ripen. The sacred writers seem to feel this, and they tell us nothing of Christ, or next to nothing, till He is ready for the great three years of toil, and suffering, and death.

There is another thing about which the sacred writers have preserved a wise silence in which many in our time would do well to imitate them-I refer to the reserve with which they alway deal with the future state. Here again they were under great temptation to minister to curiosity. How intense the desire is in all of us to peer into the invisible. Let a man describe a deathbed scene, with what eagerness men listen to all the details, straining eyes and ears to catch a glimpse or a whisper of that which is just within the veil, trying to learn the great secret which we must die to know. In this matter there is a certain dignity about the Scripture which impresses me very much. The reserve which is necessary to our probation in this world is religiously kept as befits the majesty of Him to whom secret things belong. John tells us of the resurrection of Lazarus. He must

have known him after his resurrection. It would seem almost impossible to refrain from the questions-"Where wert thou, brother, those four days?" “What is death, and what does it do to us?" "What is the condition of a disembodied spirit, and what its occupations?" "Has it full consciousness, and does it know what is passing on the earth?" Human curiosity has always been busy with such matters, and a few words from Lazarus would have been worth more than whole libraries of so-called speculations. But a divine wisdom "sealed the lips of that Evangelist,"

when mere human wisdom would certainly have said something. We are told that at the resurrection of Christ some of the dead came out of their graves, that they "went into the holy city and appeared unto many." Fancy the interviewing which would have taken place if the Evangelists had been modern newspaper correspondents, searching through all worlds for something new and sensational for their readers! A loftier spirit presided over the Scripture,— a spirit of reverence and reserve. It is said of the ancient worthies-these all died in faith. The curtain was before the unknown world till the very moment of their entering. It must be so with us. After all the restless speculations of our time on the future life we have to leave the mystery very much where we found it. Everlasting life and everlasting death are profound mysteries as yet. God's explanation will be worthy of Himself, but it will probably be very different from what any of us have thought, very different from the solutions given in the many books on the future life which speak so confidently on the subject. There must be an immense difference everywhere and in all worlds between a life of obedience and a life of sin, and there we leave it. This book tells what will be the true blessedness of life and what its wretchedness. The blessedness is righteousness, the utter absence of sin; the wretchedness is separation from God. More it may have been as impossible to tell as to give us a conception of a sixth sense, or enable us to comprehend modes of existence absolutely transcendental to all our present experience. Let us learn from what the Bible does not say as well as from what it does.

It is said

A word or two, also, in reference to the plain-spokenness of the Bible, which I hold to be as wise as its silence. that it contains things which are repulsive to taste and which cannot be read without pain. I will concede at once that there are matters contained in its pages not suitable to be read aloud before a promiscuous audience, and there are modes of expression which nobody thought very much out of

the way when our present translation was made, and which no doubt will be altered when the new revision of the Scriptures is complete. But the Bible is something more than a book to be read openly in public. It is a book for every man's private guidance: it deals with human life, and deals with it not as one may fancy it, but as it actually is. The pity is not that the bad things referred to are spoken of in the book, but that they are done in man's life, and as long as they are done it is needful to speak about them. There is one thing worse than plain speech, and that is moral corruption. There are things under the fair surface of life-even the surface is by no means always fair-but fair or not there are things deeper down that demand plain speaking at times. There is a very real sense in which in this respect it is true: "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." If medical men, for example, could sometimes speak out plainly and tell us all they see and of which they say nothing, as to the way in which sin works down to death out of sight, some people might possibly be saved who now are lost. Be that as it may, I do not think there is too much plain speaking, but if it be done kindly, rather too little, and I am glad the Bible speaks plainly. It carries the candle of the Lord into the deepest recesses of the human heart; it lays bare the secret pollutions, and probes the worst ulcers of our moral nature. All this is very painful, but it is always done in kindness. It is well that the book should be read in public, but also it must enter into the chamber and speak to each man's ear alone. It never lets a man lose himself in the crowd, but it sometimes speaks to us in confidential secrecy as a parent to a child, as a guardian with his ward, as a friend with erring brother, as a kind physician with his patient. If it does speak plainly it is that it may save us from worse things than suffering. It always deals with sin seriously; never for the purpose of raising a laugh or a It acts up to its own maxim that it is fools alone who make a mock of sin, for sin is not a thing for mockery.

sneer.

It approaches the man who has gone wrong as a human judge deals with a criminal from the bench, with gravity and compassion. It exposes sin unsparingly and denounces it with all the terrors of the Lord, but it is that it may beseech men by the mercies of God to repent and live.

In this lecture I have been speaking of the Bible simply in its literary aspects. The subject is a very wide one. It would be interesting to show how powerfully this book has influenced the literature, the art, the poetry, and the music of the world by its inspirations. It would be easy also to show how powerfully it has affected the whole course of modern civilization, quickening the intelligence and independence of mind, witnessing for individual freedom, while it lays the foundations of society broad and deep. It is to the Bible that woman owes the attainment of her true place in society. Shakspeare's women have often been. spoken of as among his noblest creations, but even they pale their soft and beauteous light before the women of the Bible. By the noble pictures of the Hebrew daughter, and wife, and mother, the amenities of woman's life are vindicated, her mission defended, her ministrations allowed and acknowledged, and she is placed at man's side, his companion, and friend, and equal, and the helpmeet for him. How much also the Bible has done for the poor, and the oppressed, and the suffering. It is through its influence that legislation has grown more considerate and society at large more kind-hearted. The debt which the world owes to the Bible is great already, and daily grows greater.

But apart from its results merely as a book among books how powerfully it takes hold of us through every stage of our life. It is indeed a book of perennial interest for the little child as well as the grown man. In a paper written a few years ago, Professor Huxley says :— If Bible reading is not accompanied by constraint and solemnity, as if it were a sacramental operation, I do not believe that there is anything in which children take more pleasure. At least, I know that

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some of the pleasantest recollections of my childhood are connected with the voluntary study of an ancient Bible which belonged to my grandmother. There were splendid pictures, to be sure; but I recollect little or nothing about them, save a portrait of the High Priest and his vestments. What comes vividly back to my mind are remembrances of my delight in the histories of Joseph and David; and of my keen appreciation of the chivalrous kindness of Abraham in his dealings with Lot. And I see as in a cloud pictures of the grand phantasmagoria of the book of Revelation. I enumerate as they issue the childish impressions which come crowding out of the pigeon-holes in my brain in which they have lain almost undisturbed for forty years. I prize them as an evidence that a child five or six years old left to his own devices may be deeply interested in the Bible, and draw sound moral sustenance from it." The Book which thus has the power to charm a child is also the Book to which the aged man turns after the battle of life for comfort and cheer. In illustration of this there is the well-known story told by Lockhart, of Sir Walter Scott. Sir Walter was drawing near to his end, and once more, almost for the last time, he wished to be drawn into his library and placed by the central window that he might look down upon the Tweed. Here he expressed a wish that Lockhart would read to him, and when he was asked from what book, he said :—“ Need you ask? there is but one." No! when life is waning there is but one book which comes to our hearts with sustaining power. Lockhart read the 14th chapter of St. John's Gospel, which tells of the peace of Christ and the many mansions of the Father's house. The calm of heaven entered the great man's soul as the words fell on his ear:-"This is a great comfort," said he, "I have followed you distinctly, and I feel as if I were yet to be myself again." For life's morning and evening like God's testimonies are wonderful.